"Progress"

[Oh look, it's Monday and I haven't written the Thursday piece I had brewing. ANYWAY. *ahem*]

I've been thinking a lot about my idea of social progress lately. One thing that strikes me is how it seems contradictory to the actual definition of progress. A lot of what needs to get done in order for our society to be where I feel it should be is actually clearing away previously developed societal bullshit, like heterosexism and cissexism. Or the idea that you always have to somehow earn/pay for everything positive that happens in your life--especially things like information. Also when it manifests in the form of a moral obligation for everyone to "pay their dues/do their fair share" or whatever being prioritized over the moral obligation to make sure your fellow humans don't starve and aren't forced to be homeless. Human obsession with fairness, basically.

My actual ideals of progress aren't really all that relevant to this post, so I'll stop there. Anyway. Clearing away accumulated societal bullshit is in a way almost regressive--going back to a time when these things weren't problems. Although actually, a lot of these problems arise from instincts that were useful at some point. Before we had them, we weren't the same humans we are now. Fairness, for example. It's necessary when you're a small hunter gatherer tribe--stinginess or laziness is death. It's absolutely imperative that everyone does their fair share (meaning what they're capable of/best at doing, not necessarily the exact same thing as the other group members.)

I don't think I actually mean some sort of regression. More like examining our accumulated values and social mores and determining how they actually function, then tossing out the ones that don't work (or never worked.) That doesn't mean they all need to function--it's just that the harmful ones (like sexual shame and fear of differences, if you look at my specific ideals) need to go away.

Trouble is, of course, everyone has slightly (or radically) different ideas of what should be defined as "harmful" and what they consider "ideal". I like to hope that I will at least live to see a society that has progressed to a point where we don't need words like "transgender" and "gay" and the like because everyone has come to accept whatever gender identity and sexual orientation (or lack thereof) without question or judgement. There will be no standard of what is "normal" or "better", and so there will be no need for specific words for people who fall outside of those standards. Perhaps the people who actually find them convenient to describe themselves will still use them, but we will no longer need labels to empower ourselves because there will be no need to explain ourselves to people whose genders and sexual orientations aren't as uncommon.

The above is, of course, a rather selfish hope, in that it focuses only on the societal bullshit that hurts me directly. I think it can be expanded to other situations of intolerance of differences, though (instead of questioning differently-abled people or assuming they're inferior, find ways to integrate them into society, thus reducing the amount of disabled people whose difficulties are more a result of not conforming to the expectations of the society they live in than not having certain abilities, for example. Ditto assuming some cultures are inferior to others. Obviously prejudice based on skin color/appearance needs to get lost.)

I don't mean to write a laundry list of my ideals of social progress. I just don't feel I can post something like this without elaborating what I mean at least a little bit if I don't want to write something that comes off as pseudo-inclusive. I'd stop before I go on more tangents, but before I do, I should also mention that I don't actually believe in progress as a steady force in human society. I think society is shitty sometimes, and more shitty the rest of the time, but not necessarily in that order and in the same place. Yet, politically speaking, I still consider myself to be "progressive". But I wouldn't be progressive if I was satisfied with human society as it was. So I think what I really mean is "idealistic".